torstai 29. syyskuuta 2016

You gotta love shrubs. They need no care and still look beautiful from spring to autumn. At the cottage I realized a bit late the lure of shrubs but at Vårkulla I have been the wiser and there are lots of shrubs and more to come. You just have to be careful not to include too many variegated ones as they might look a bit restless. But a few are just fine.

tiistai 27. syyskuuta 2016

The collector's life is a lot of fun. We found a 40's folder in near perfect condition in a flea market. This is a great addition to our shop museum's back office...which doesn't even exist yet but someday our shop museum will have two rooms. And then the imaginary shopkeeper has a great folder to file his/her papers away. Of course we had to stage a temporary office in the shop to take a few photos.

sunnuntai 25. syyskuuta 2016

You never know what you'll find in fleamarkets. My husband saw this lamp in Loviisa's market place (there are always one or two flea market tables there on Saturdays) and bought it straight away. The design is very modern, you'll find brand new lamps that are almost excactly like this one except the quality is not as great. The lamp is perfect for our living room as we needed more light on the table and there is no use putting up ceiling lights before the room is renovated.

lauantai 24. syyskuuta 2016

We had a great day! First we toured Porvoo's fleamarkets, cafes and the little chocolate factory (guess if we bought anything...). After that we visited Malmgård estate (link...), got a tour by the current owner count Creutz and afterwards shopped in the estate's foodie heaven. We bought flours, pasta, rice made from spelt grains and beer.

maanantai 19. syyskuuta 2016

It is getting a bit chilly in the evenings so we took the woolen blankets out of the closet and into the gazebo. At the moment we are also glad that we bought a couple of woolen carpets for the gazebo as wool is really warm under the feet (compared to cotton).

sunnuntai 18. syyskuuta 2016

My summer flowers started to look a bit sad. As there is still hope for a long and warm autumn, I bought new flowers for the back garden. The fuchsia is still flowering so it gets to stay for a while. In geranium pots I planted heathers - the green leaves of geraniums still look nice and the heathers bring colour.

sunnuntai 11. syyskuuta 2016

There made a lot of small holders of all kinds in the fifties. I don't know what they were used for (candies, keys, peanuts?) but I just love them. The latest find is this rattan one with a glass tray with red/clear stripes.

lauantai 10. syyskuuta 2016

Everybody needs a metal match box holder, don't they? Well, we do as we wanted to show off our "own" match box. The box is an exact copy of the ones that were sold in our shop. Ingelins owned the shop before us and they had created an own label. One collector had published the label on the internet and we copied the picture and printed a set and glued them to new boxes.

torstai 8. syyskuuta 2016

We stock our toilet papers in an old enamel dish on top of an old scale. The scale is in working order so it is great to have something on top of it to prevent you from spontaneously weighing yourself...

tiistai 6. syyskuuta 2016

Vintage Karhula glass is easy to find but the prices have gone over the roof lately. I have been on a lookout for old "string vases" (narupurkki in Finnish) for a while and finally find one in Facebook flea market. Luckily all Helsinkians don't know the price you should ask for these :)

sunnuntai 4. syyskuuta 2016

The lavender is already wilting a bit but the pelargonium still soldiers on. I have collected enamel pitchers for a while and was happy to find a pink one a couple of weeks ago. It looks good empty which is great as there are not so many flowers to cut at this time of the year.

lauantai 3. syyskuuta 2016

We happened to buy a vintage child mannequine head and had a bit difficulties with it as it doesn't stay upright without support. There were three cheese molds lying on the floor and the head kind of ended on top of them. Funny but a bit scary or what do you think?